


In the Isolation of the Sky

by Prevalent_Masters



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Communes With the Sky, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, Past Torture, Post CA:TWS, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Road Trips, The Grand Canyon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2794157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prevalent_Masters/pseuds/Prevalent_Masters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He begins dreaming of sky after the Smithsonian.  Not the grey, quiet sky but the blue one.  Blue with rays of sunlight.  On nights when he also dreams of the blood and the screaming and his finger pulling triggers triggers triggers these dreams of blue break him out and away.  Benediction.  A prayer.</p><p>(Or, Bucky is rescued but can't quite figure out who he's supposed to be.  So he goes on a personal journey of self-discovery to the Grand Canyon and probably scares Steve shitless)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Isolation of the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so late to the Cap2 party but my friend made me watch it a few weeks ago and I am NOT OKAY so here have yet another Bucky recovery fic.

 

The man talks.  He begs.  He pleads. He calls him a name. _Bucky_ , he says, _Bucky_.

He watches him fall and he is frozen, bones solid and unmoving because this wasn’t part of the mission, no one told him what to do if he ever recognized one of his targets.  No one told him what to do if a target stopped fighting back.

He watches him fall and this man with the tender eyes and too-large body is not supposed to fall.  This is not supposed to happen.

He should let the man drown and he should burn with this helicarrier.  The mission will be complete and he will be free.  Done. Quiet.

He jumps.

  

* * *

  

At the museum, he stares into his own eyes and tries to recognize something inside of them.  Nothing comes.  This man smiles and he laughs.  He looks at the man next to him with something like devotion, something like love and he hasn’t felt that in so long he’s not sure he’d recognize it if it came for him again.

  

* * *

 

There’s something—a voice, bruised knuckles, the fall of light on bright strands of hair.  There’s always something but it floats in front of him like a mirage, too far away to see, disappearing when he tries to get closer.  All the times they put him in the chair, and it never went away. Just faded, wore lighter and lighter like an old photograph exposed to sunlight.

 

* * *

 

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. The Asset.  He doesn’t know which is which.  Neither fit into the confines of his frayed skin.

  

* * *

 

There is no plan in his head that doesn’t involve the Mission.  That’s all there’s ever been.  So what’s he supposed to do when he fails?  He goes back to the meeting point after he drags the man to shore and waits. Waits.  Waits.  He will be punished for failing, he knows that.  He wonders why he doesn’t leave.  He could. No one comes.  He stays. 

 No one comes.

Leaving is the hardest thing he’s ever done because no one told him he could.  No one tells him what to do and he can’t function this way he can’t he can’t he can’t

His arm still hangs useless by his side. He’s covered in blood and sweat and musty river water and he needs to get out and get clean; he hates the feeling of blood caked inside his nail beds but he can’t remember how to do it himself.  He can’t remember the last time he did anything for himself.  Here’s what his life is: come out of the cold.  Questions questions questions questions and tests. Mission orders. He carries out the mission. He kills and kills and kills. Return to meeting point. Questions questions questions questions. The chair, and it _hurts_.  Cold.

But now he’s failed step four and no one comes and the blood under his fingernails itches and burns and reminds him of every time he’s ever pulled a trigger.

Time after time after time.

He leaves.  It isn’t difficult to break into an empty apartment, steal clothes from a sleek dresser, take a shower.  He does this mechanically.  He can barely feel the warmth of the water against his skin; he’s always cold now, he’s forgotten what warmth feels like.

He pops his shoulder back into place, braced against the cold tiles of the bathroom wall, teeth clamped down on a washcloth so no sound escapes.  _You are worth nothing_ , a voice whispers in his ears, _your pain doesn’t matter. Be silent._

He is silent.

 

* * *

 

So here’s what happened: He knows this. He remembers this. He fell and he screamed. And at the very very bottom there was snow and there was ice that cut deep.  He sees white as it falls onto him.  It’s snowing.  The train (train? Train) is long long gone and it is snowing. 

This part could be a dream: he thinks he remembers it as peaceful.  It didn’t hurt, not after a bit.  It didn’t hurt and he watched the snow and he felt it cover him up, soft, quiet blanket to erase him from the world.  He thought he was dead and it was okay, it’s alright because it doesn’t hurt.

But that must be a mistake, a fragment of some fevered dream he had sometime, some day a long long time ago because everything from that point forward has only been pain.  And it got worse and worse and he got quieter and quieter until he didn’t speak at all and at night—sometimes, when they let him sleep—he dreamed of snow.

He thinks he must have felt relief when they finally put him into the cold, because it was some silent, crude reminder of that white, quiet blankness.

  

* * *

 

This he remembers: he remembers a man in Amsterdam begging for his life.  He remembers brains spread out on a wall behind him.  He remembers a woman begging and begging and crying in a flat in Kiev, she will do anything to save him but she will not tell him what he was told he needs to know. He kills the man in front of her and slits her throat minutes later.  He remembers a red woman and the dead man he killed through her. This he remembers: he remembers blood and more blood.  The entire world is black and white but for the blood.

This he remembers: he has killed children. Orphans.  He has killed pregnant women.  He has killed young men, soldiers who he had no orders for but they were in the way and in a black and white world there is no room for mercy. Right?  Was he supposed to leave them alive?  Was he?  No one told him. No one tells him. If he is not told, what do they expect him to do?

This he remembers: bright, painful desert. He is wet and sticky beneath his uniform and this he realizes is because he is hot.  Too hot.  Distantly, he recognizes the clothing he wears—dark, heavy leather; armor to protect him and to warn others of his threat—makes him hot.  He does not know how to proceed.  This he remembers—rifle scope and belly down on scorching sand and rock. He makes the shot because there is no other choice and leaves quickly.  He moves slower than usual, and wonders if he is malfunctioning. His body heavy, his head so light. This he remembers: he sees the sky because he is no longer standing to look straight ahead.  The last sky he saw was white and cold.  This sky is so blue it hurts his eyes.  He cannot describe the color.  He had forgotten it.  _Blue_ , he tells himself, repeats it to pin down the memory. _Blue_. He knows this color because he has seen it before.  He turns his head to look at the sun and it is blinding, bright-white and yellow and blue.

 This he remembers: he has seen yellow and blue before, together.  He has seen them on a man and it was blinding, like this sky.  Beautiful, like this sky.

 

* * *

  

His arm—the one the man broke, the one he fixed, like it’s been fixed before, he did the _same thing_ they always did how did he go wrong _what does he do_ —isn’t working.  It hurts still.  Sometimes it gets stuck and he has to lean against a wall to shove at it a bit so it will move correctly. It is ugly and purple and green and a part of it sometimes bleeds and the whole thing is puffy and hot when he touches it.  This is not supposed to happen. He doesn’t know a lot, but he knows that he has always healed fast.  He remembers…he remembers bullets.  He has had bullets in his stomach, his shoulder, his legs.  He remembers bloody holes one day and smooth skin the next. This is not supposed to happen.

The other arm—the one he has to hide because he’s learned it scares people—squeaks.  It makes sounds he does not recognize and when he wants it to act—reach forward, grab something—it is slow to respond.  Once, when he is in a café, eating something that looks like pie but is actually eggs, he tries to pick up his plate and his fingers stop working halfway through and the plate crashes to the ground and everyone, everyone is looking at him looking looking looking—

 He learns to use this arm less often. It is difficult when his other arm is in pain, but he has worked through pain before.  Pain is no indication of functionality. 

He begins dreaming of sky, after the Smithsonian. Not the grey, quiet sky but the blue one.  Blue with rays of sunlight. On nights when he also dreams of the blood and the screaming and the finger pulling triggers triggers triggers these dreams of blue break him out and away.  Benediction.  A prayer.

Sometimes he wakes with this on his lips: _32557038_. This number, he does not understand. It is an important thing. He must keep saying it. But he doesn’t _remember_ —

He goes back to the Smithsonian and it reminds him that he was a soldier.  It gives him this number— _his_ number—and if he can’t reconcile the name James Barnes with his mind, he can give himself this. He can have a number.

Correct?

No one answers when he asks this out loud. He should know better than to call attention to himself, because now people are looking at him strangely, a few with a tinge of recognition.  So he leaves, but he takes the number with him like he stole it, tucked into his pocket out of sight, something he can run his fingers over to feel, shape with his tongue, make _his_.

No one answers him but he thinks that must be alright. They would have told him no, anyway.

  

* * *

  

_You see this, Stevie?  He’d brought a Life magazine home from work.  Look at that! Think about drawing that, all that red rock and blue sky.  A Life magazine with an article on the desert.  The Grand Canyon.  After all this is over, he’d said.  After all this is over we’ll go out there, out west.  We’ll see the Grand Canyon._

_It was never all over.  In his mind, the ghost of red cliffs and blue sky._

  

* * *

 

He should leave DC.  He should go far, far away, another continent. He should go to kill everyone who has ever touched him.

He doesn’t.

He stays in DC and remembers and remembers. He stays because the smallest part of him will not let himself leave the city where he was supposed to rendezvous with his handlers.  He knew they weren’t coming from the beginning.  He knows. Nobody tells him to go, nobody tells him to stay.  Staying is easier.

He stays and he is sick and tired and all he has is this number which he repeats over and over and the memories that attack him in the dreams.  The sky is grey every day, not blue.  It grows blustery and cold. Rain.  The small part of his brain that is logical tells him this is because it is winter now.  This is the season he was made for. 

When the man finds him his resistance is laughably pathetic.  He strikes out but his metal arm is too slow and his flesh one hurts too much. This is not the man made of blue and light but he is gentle anyway, like that man was, and all he can say is the number, over and over.  He can’t tell this man the name he wants to hear, but he can tell him the number he has made his own.

He feels fear—this is an emotion he recognizes. He is terrified. But he is still functional—maybe not so much, but he thinks if they gave him a _mission_ , if someone would just _tell him what to do_ , then he would be functional but—his arm hurts.

He lets the man touch him, gently, because why not? What does he have left to protect? What did he ever have?

He thinks he asks the man who he is. The man might answer “I can’t tell you that".  Not in a cruel way, in a way that implies he really doesn’t know who he is.  No one does. No one no one no one

  

* * *

 

He wakes restrained.  Can’t move, arm a dead weight, mind fuzzy in the way that implies drugs.  The room is different—bright and white, with the strange incongruity of a potted orchid on the bedside table—but it’s them.  It has to be.

He can’t.  He can’t.  He’ll die. He would rather die.

There is a sound, a high keening, a whine. It takes him a few moments to realize it comes from him.  He wishes to growl, howl, but his throat—his voice.  His voice doesn’t come.  And he tugs and he tugs at the restraints on his wrist, his legs, twists his body in desperation, but without his arm he is helpless.  Weak. 

No longer functional.

He relaxes immediately, slumping back down on the bed. He is no longer functional, he is broken.  And what use does anyone have for a broken weapon?  They will remake him, or they will kill him.  There is nothing he can do.

He hopes they make them forget.

Dampness on his cheeks, beneath his eyes. He does not understand what it could be.

“Bucky?”

Blue sky and sunlight.  Concerned crease to the brown and reaching hands. Tender eyes and too-large body. That high, terrible sound still coming out of his mouth.

“Bucky, it’s okay.  You’re safe.  You’re okay.” The man walks closer and he recoils. He does not want to be touched, even by those hands.  His right hand still tugs at the restraint, useless, maddening.

“You aren’t stable, you’re hurt. That’s why we had to restrain you, but you’re not a prisoner, Bucky, I promise…” The man still advances, though now his hands are held up as though in surrender, a calming gesture.

More people in the room.  A white coat.  He knows people with white coats and this man, this blueskysunlight keeps calling him…calling him…

_Bucky!_

“They’re just trying to calm you down…”

He knows, he knows that.  This is step one.  Soon it will be cold.  He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t—

 

* * *

  

But it is supposed to be cold. Frosted breath. Slow heart.  But it is so supposed to be cold and he isn’t, he isn’t

  

 

and his heart.

 

* * *

  

There is this sound, it beeps in his ear and it reminds him of things he does not want to think about.  He wants to make it stop and he thinks if he could just reach out…but his arm, it won’t move.  It won’t move and he knows what this means he knows he’s coming out of the cryo chamber, arm out of commission until they decide its safe to reboot it.  Those last few seconds before the cold comes crashing down on him, he knows, he knows, he _remembers_

This can’t be right.

 

* * *

 

This he remembers: hands reaching towards him, palms out, either covered in blood or clean and pure, not even dirt in the nail beds. A hundred voices, a hundred languages. Always the same word. _Please_.  He does not listen.

This he remembers: smoky stone street. Dirty water and heavy lifting.  Cramped cold room and blue eyes.  The Grand Canyon in black and white charcoal.

This he remembers: out of the cold shivering and weak. Needles in his skin, voices in his ear. _Who are you?  Who are you?_ 32557038.  And, eventually, nothing.  _Your mission is. Your mission is. Your mission is._

None of that now, and this cannot be right.

  

* * *

 

A man sits down next to him.  Picks up a paper cup full of water and holds it to his lips. He takes a sip and is surprised at the taste.  It tastes of nothing, it tastes of cold and fresh, it tastes of glacial rivers and snow peaks. He gulps at it. The man smiles. This man does not have blue eyes and bright hair, this man has dark skin and laugh lines and though he does not know him he feels the quivering, coiled thing in his chest unknot the slightest bit.

“How do you feel?”  The man asks.  How does he feel?  “Functional.” Voice a cracked whisper. It makes him cough. He thinks maybe his answer was a lie. The man’s brow furrows and he pats the blanket by the arm that does not work.  “Okay,” he says, “alright.  Can you tell me who you are?”

The tightness in his chest curls back up so quickly he nearly chokes.  “ _No,”_ he gasps and he isn’t sure if he’s answering the question or begging, because that question he recognizes…

“Hey, hey,” the man soothes.  “It’s okay.  You’re okay.” The man keeps patting the blanket by his arm, soothing but never touching.  “Only, when I found you, you told me a number.  Remember?”

Remember?  Yes. He remembers that, he remembers the number, the museum’s gift.  He can tell this man the number.  “32557038.”

The man nods, encouraging.  “Can you tell me what the number means?”

“It’s _mine_ ,” he snarls the words, surprised by the possessiveness rushing through him.  It is his.  It is his.  His number.

The man grinds wide.  This makes him feel good.  He has pleased this man, and this man has not taken away his number. This is good.

“Good,” the man reaffirms.  He pats the blanket one last time. “You can go back to sleep now, if you like.”  It is not an order, but a suggestion.  He does not know how to reply, so he just closes his eyes.  He hears quiet footsteps and the shut of a door.  The knot in his chest uncoils a bit more and he breathes out a long, thready sigh.  32557038. 32557038.

 

* * *

 

He wakes, and the man is there. The man on the helicarrier. He fell after him and dragged him from the river, watched water bubble out of his mouth.  The man from the bridge.  They made him forget.  Incongruous broad back and tall legs leading through hallways on fire.  They made him forget.  Blue eyes and bright hair in a small dingy room in a large dirty city. They made him forget. They made him forget.

The man sleeps.  He stares at his face.  Long eyelashes. Creased forehead. This was the mission. But the mission failed. No one has given him a new mission. Does that mean this man is still the mission?  He tries to reach for him, but his arm is still that dead weight, uncooperative. He is not functional. If he is not functional, he cannot have a mission.  He stares at the man. He sleeps again.

  

* * *

 

“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” the man says quietly, sitting next to him.  “We grew up together.  We fought in the war. You’re my friend.”

“I don’t remember,” he says.  This is a lie, partially.  He remembers glimpses, gasps. 

“I know,” says the man, staring down at his twisted fingers.

“32557038,” he offers.  Then, “I remember,”

“Yeah,” says the man.  “That was your serial number, in the war.”

“The war.”

“It’s over now.”

It’s not.

 

* * *

 

They take away his arm entirely. Now all he has is this stump, the place where it should connect empty on his shoulder.  He feels the loss, the imbalance.  He wants it back, but he is _worth nothing, you are not allowed to want, be silent. Do not speak._ It hurt when they disconnected it, they told him it would, but he would not let them put him to sleep. 

 

* * *

 

"I broke you," he tells the man with dark skin and laugh lines.  "I remember."

The man shrugs, ridiculously unaffected.  "You broke my wings, yeah.  Tore one.  But it's nothing a bit of repair didn't fix, right?  Tony had 'em back to me in about two days, seven times better than they were."

"But-" he doesn't understand.  He broke this man.  This man should be angry, should hate him.  This is how these things work.  But this man is kind.  Is there a trick to it?

"Look," says the man, patting his hand on the blanket where his arm should be.  "You're fine.  Really.  It wasn't you."

"It  _was_."

"But did you want to?  When you did it, did you know what you were doing?"

"I...don't remember?"

"So," the man says, smiles wide and gap-toothed, warm.  "You've got nothing to worry about."

Still, he feels incomplete.  Like he owes something else.  "I'm...sorry?" he tries.

The man moves his hand to gently pat his shoulder, and to his surprise the contact feels good.  Comforting.  "You're forgiven.  I promise."

 

* * *

 

They ask him if he wants to go home with the blue-eyed man.  The dark skinned man with the laugh lines would be there, too.  They do not tell him what to do, but he does not suppose he has any other choice.

 

* * *

 

“What should we call you?” asks the man with laugh lines.  He asks, unlike the blue-eyed man who just avoids addressing him by name with an almost painful conscientiousness. He doesn’t know how to answer the man. All these people asking instead of telling.  He has always been the Asset, or _that_. He wants to be called by his number, but he does not think either man will be happy if he asks for this and he doesn’t want to disappoint.

“James?”  His voice cracks on the name, but the man smiles and that feels good.

 

* * *

  

He learns to call this man Sam. Sam is this man’s name, just like James is now his.  Always was his? Perhaps.

The blue-eyed man’s name is Steve. This he knows. He’s known that since the beginning. He just can’t bear to speak it.

 

* * *

  

The blue-eyed man is always so sad. It’s because of him, he knows.

He does not know what to do to fix it.

 

* * *

 

He begins to dream.  Before, the dreams were simplistic, brief flashes and impressions of people and places.  Now, they are memories played out like movie reels in front of his captive eyes. He is in the chair and it hurts. He knows he does not want this, but he cannot fight anymore.  He can’t be sure how many times this has happened to him now, enough to know its all inevitable. Nothing he can do. He is running on broken legs. He hasn’t had food or water for days, but that doesn’t matter.  They have not allowed him to sleep.  He does not know for how long.  He keeps going because it is the mission.  All the mission. Failing a mission is not an option.

He shot the tire of a car once, made it fall right off the edge.  The perfect bullet, the perfect distance to make it look like they ran over something in the road that popped their tire, a tragic accident.  Devastating.  He made it back to the rendezvous point and everyone was happy, celebrating. Someone shoved a glass of clear liquid into his hand and while everyone else drank he could only stare at it. Drinking was not part of the mission. This was not allowed.

But he was so thirsty.  So thirsty.  He drank and it wasn’t water, it was something fiery and painful, made him cough while at the same time dredging up something older—a dimly lit room, the sound of men’s laughter, swallow after swallow and a sense of desperation in his chest _please let me get drunk, please, they can’t have changed me that much, I can’t be that different please_.

The agent who gave him the vodka was in trouble. He was in worse. The asset—he was dragged by the hair once they got back to base, hit again and again and again. _You are worth nothing, you need nothing, you get nothing unless we give it to you. You do nothing unless we tell you to. Us, not them.  You know that.  You are not worth food or drink.  Your pain doesn’t matter.  Be silent. Be silent.  We will have to increase the electricity._ Pain.  His throat still burned from the alcohol.

He wakes that night screaming. It takes both the blue-eyed man and Sam to restrain him until he calms down.  “You’re in Washington D.C.,” Sam repeats again and again, a mantra. “It’s 2015.  I’m Sam.  This is Steve. You’re safe, you’re not there anymore.” He repeats it. Repeats.  Just like he repeated when he lay on the table in Zola’s lab, yes, he remembers this now, needles pricking his skin, pain crawling up every limb, paralyzed and helpless as Zola talked to him, prodded him, asked him questions.  _James Buchanan Barnes.  Sergeant.  32557038._ Repeated over and over and over again.  Until the blue-eyed man came.

“You saved me,” he gasps out, gripping the neck of Steve’s t-shirt.  “That was you.” Steve bleeds from an ugly welt on his forehead.  His fault. He fought Steve. He hurt Steve.

He knows Steve wants to save him again, that’s the only reason he’s still around.  He doesn’t know if he can be saved this time, though.

The dreams keep coming and he wakes to his own screaming, already fighting.  Sometimes he calms down in minutes.  Sometimes it takes hours.  He remembers more and more and more and—none of it.  He doesn’t want to remember any of it.

“I’m a monster,” he says one night, hears the hollowness of his own voice.  “I’m nothing.”

“James,” Steve says, heavy next to him, hand still lightly gripping his wrist, continuing the touch that calmed him minutes before.

“No—no.  You can’t call me that.  I’m not—“

“You are.”  Ever patient and stubborn, Steve is.  He remembers this.  It is not an altogether bad memory.  One of the few.

“I _killed_ people—so many people.  I killed _children_. Not because I was told to. Because they were _in the way_ , do you _get that_?”

“It wasn’t you, James, we’ve been over this—“

“Well they’re _my fucking memories_!”  Sometimes he gets like this.  Sometimes, he is angry.

 

* * *

  

Some days he can almost imagine himself as James, can almost fool himself into believing the name belongs to him. Most days, the number is still the only thing he can lay claim to. 

Some days, he is even less than the number. Some days, he is nothing, because he has to be.

  

* * *

 

Once in every rare often, when he falls back asleep curled close, but not touching Steve, when Steve insists on staying after he wakes up panicked from the third nightmare of the night, once every often he dreams deeper.  He dreams of blue skies and red canyon walls and of someone calling him Bucky.  On these nights, he sleeps the rest of the short dark hours dreamless.

* * *

 

But the dreams never really stop and he keeps fighting Steve, keeps fighting Sam, keeps hurting both of them.

He has to leave, he decides.

If he and James Buchanan Barnes ever have a hope of being reconciled, it won’t be like this, trembling in corners of darkened rooms, screaming out every night, hurting the very people who are trying, so inexplicably, so desperately, to help.

He has to find whatever it is he’s lost on his own. He has to move. He _wants_ to.  And he’s sure Sam and Steve and the various psychotherapists who show up every so often courtesy of someone named “Tony” would vehemently disagree, but he doesn’t have a choice. He’s a danger to them. He’s not pleasing them. He hurts them and he’s seen Steve cry when he thinks no one is watching.  He doesn’t have any choice but to leave.

Or, rather, perhaps he finally does.

  

* * *

 

This he remembers: Running through the streets. Oppressive heat of summer, in nothing but sweaty shirttails, bare feet because shoes give blisters. His mother always yells at him when he comes home sweaty and smudged.  He leaves his shoes at Steve’s house too often.  This is what he remembers: the cries of seagulls, white bodies against blue sky.  Rides at Coney Island. He saves up his money for them, coins clinking in his left pocket. 

This he remembers: Rooming with Steve and working two jobs.  Coming home late so tired and almost crying because he has to get up in four hours to get down to the docks to work a full shift and then go back to the greengrocer’s and work late again but he has to, he _has_ to because Steve is sick again and he can’t do his illustrations when he’s sick, so there’s no money from him…and even with all of that, there isn’t enough money for rent and food and the medicine they need.  And he could ask his mother for help, but Bucky Barnes has a little thing called pride that won’t let him take charity, even from his own family. And it’s not as though his mother has a lot to spare…

This he remembers: Splitting headache. Dry throat.  Hurts to swallow.  He tries to get up and his head spins and he might be sick on the floor. He gets up again because this is not an option. This he remembers: cool hands on his forehead, someone tipping water down his throat. “You need’ta be ‘n bed, Steve,” he slurs and Steve shakes his head and holds out the water glass again. “You take care of me enough, Bucky,” he says quietly.  “Let me take care of you.”

 

* * *

 

He wants his arm back.  He _wants_. He is terrified to ask, but he does it. He sidles into the kitchen, pressed close to the door for an easy escape route.  Steve is making a sandwich at the counter.  He smiles when he sees him, pushes a cup of coffee across towards him. “Morning, James.” This name sounds wrong when it comes out of Steve’s mouth.

He takes the coffee and gulps it too fast. Burns his mouth. It’s okay, though. He’s still functional. “I want—“ his voice fails him. He cannot say. He cannot say what he wants.

Steve looks up and meets his eyes and his expression is heartbreaking.  “What? What do you want, B—James?” _what do you think you want?  Why do you think you have the right to ask?  You are the Asset.  You are nothing. You do not want._

His mouth is open but no words come out.

“James?”  Steve is soft, Steve is gentle, Steve is sad. This is why he must leave, but to leave he needs his arm.

“My arm—please.  I won’t—you can deactivate it, at night, but I—“

“Of course,” Steve says immediately. No hesitation at all. He can’t help but be surprised. “We’ll take you to Tony.”

 

* * *

 

Tony is loud.  He is not sure if he likes him or not.  “Capsicle!” he greats when Steve walks in, loudly. “And the bionic homicidal grandfather!” He does not know exactly what this means, but Tony says it loudly.  He seems delighted when Steve asks about the arm.  Starts talking some technical mumbo-jumbo.  Loudly.

“Take a seat, Sergeant,” he says, sweeping a pile of screwdrivers and scrap metal off a nearby table and rubbing his hands together. “And this arm, my god. Congrats on the arm. It’s like a wet dream come true, working on this thing, let me tell you.  I’ve made some slight changes, I think it’ll be a lot nicer for you. Cleaned it up a bit, you know—I mean, it was _nice_ , but it was no Stark technology.  Those Soviets can’t even _approximate_ Stark technology, that’s a ridiculous thought.  So listen…” He talks.  A lot.  Loudly. Steve is a slightly concerned presence hovering at the side.  Interjecting every so often, “Yes, Tony, but is that _advisable_ ,” or “How is that supposed to benefit him?” or “Will it hurt?” He doesn’t really care about anything either of them talk about.  He just wants his arm back.

“Hey,” Tony says, finally addressing him again. “You ready?  I can put it back on, but the nerve reconnection’ll hurt. You want something for the pain? We finally figured horse tranquilizers do it for Capsicle here, at least for localized anesthetic. We could give it a try.”

He shakes his head.  “No.”

“You sure?” 

Steve steps up next to him and rests a gentle hand on his shoulder.  He is getting used to these touches, and they do not scare him as much anymore. “Just do it, Tony. I’ve got him.”

It hurts.  It does.  He doesn’t flinch. He got something he _wanted_ , and he can’t show pain now, can’t show he isn’t functional because he is _worth nothing, his pain means nothing be silent silent silentsilentsilent_

“James?  You okay?”

“Sergeant?”

He realizes he is breathing much to fast, coiled up and tight like a spring.  He realizes he scares the men who are helping him.  “I’m—“  His arm is reconnected.  He flexes the fingers, and it is much lighter than it used to be, much easier to move. “I’m—“

“You like that, Sergeant?  Switched out a lot of the metal casing for a lighter alloy. Just as strong, but won’t be such a burden.  Bet it hurt, lugging that thing off one shoulder.”

Yes, he thinks.  Yes it did.  It was a constant, background pain he was trained to ignore.  It did not affect his functionality.  But oh, it hurt.

“Thank you,” he says.  “Thank you.”

  

* * *

 

So here’s what he does: he steals a car. Borrows.  He remembers how to drive, but he doesn’t remember learning. It is muscle memory once he puts his hands on the wheel.  He supposes, at one point, it must have been a necessity. 

He remembers now, more clearly, the magazine. He remembers the spread, two pages of it, the colors too bright to believe.  “They can’t be real,” Steve said dismissively.  “Rocks can’t be that color.” 

“They say it is, in the article here. Look!”  He handed Steve the magazine.  Steve regarded it with narrowed eyes.  “Even if it’s not real,” he said eventually. “It sure is pretty. Sure is.”

“We’ll go,” he remembers himself promising, back when the future still existed.  The war just begun, Steve already chomping at the bit to join up. Before the draft papers appeared in the mail.  “Sometimes I forget,” he said, “that there’s so much country out there.  Hell, Stevie, all this,” he gestured at the city behind them, the bridges, the high buildings, “all this is just a tiny strip of land! And we think it’s so big! They say out west you can see the sky for miles, and you can stand on a hill and not see a single other person.”

“You’ve been reading too many Westerns, Buck,” Steve said.  But his eyes on the picture in the magazine were bright.

 

* * *

 

He drives west.  The freeways are madness, so after he gets out of the city, after the buildings thin out and the trees come in, he leaves for smaller roads. He knows he’s going in the right direction.  There’s something they gave him that he doesn’t mind—he doesn’t think it’s possible for him to get lost.  Maybe he’ll test it out sometime. 

It’s dark, but he still catches sight of the sing. “Welcome to Indiana”. He was born in this state. It’s as far west as he’s ever been.

But

no

he has seen the Pacific Ocean he was in—?????

los angeles yes, yes he remembers los angeles and a rooftop, a shot into a dark alley, he remembers this. 

And what other places has he been? What other places has he been and forgotten? What other experiences has HYDRA taken from him and twisted and destroyed?

He has to pull over.  Has to sit for who knows how long, forehead resting on the steering wheel, just breathing.  He hates. Hates them for what they’ve done. Did.  Are still doing, their presence in his fragmented, desperate mind.

He wants to kill.  He remembers this feeling.  Not from missions.  From before. Terrifying, this wave within him, this carefully curtailed anger, molded into a destructive force.

70 years.  How many people touched him, interacted with him, went on missions with him, gave him orders, studied him?  How many people would he have to kill to truly have revenge?  Or some approximation of it?

He doesn’t remember anyone but those at the end. Pierce, he remembers. Pierce was around longer than most. Pierce was gentler, more personable. Pierce gave the cruelest missions.

Pierce hit him when he was displeased, instead of having others drag him away to some room somewhere.  His blood had been on Pierce’s bare skin. Everyone else wore gloves.

He feels as though he might be sick. He is, eventually, out the door by the side of the road.  He shouldn’t have left.  He has nothing to go toward.

Away from cities and towns, his surroundings are pitch black.  When he holds out his metal hand, it glints in the moonlight.  He looks up. 

Stars.  He thinks he might remember constellations, from before, but not like this. With all those stars, no one could ever discern a pattern.  The ancients must have been crazy.  Bright lights, bright lights.  He had forgotten the stars.

Deep breath.  Another.  Get back in the car.  _You’re okay.  You’re okay. You’re fine._

_You’re nothing._

_Do as we say._

_No._ He’s okay.

He drives.

 

* * *

 

Oklahoma lasts forever.  Texas lasts longer, even though it’s less mileage. Everything is brown dirt and fields and cattle by the side of the road.  Grey sky.

 

* * *

  

In New Mexico the earth turns red. There are weird mesas and twisted rocks and he thinks with the slightest tinge of disbelief that the magazine was right.  Rocks can be this color.

  

* * *

 

32557038\.  James Barnes.  Bucky. The Asset.  He thinks they might all be the same person. He thinks they might all be him.

 

* * *

  

He stops at a shitty diner in the outskirts of Albuquerque.  He drinks black coffee and eats toast with jam.  Ordering food is difficult, telling people what he wants is difficult because he’s still not sure about anything he wants.  If he’s allowed to want at all.  But he likes black coffee, bitter as can be and a little thick. And he likes toast—wheat bread. Skiff of butter. Jam.  So this is what he orders.

He is not prepared for another person to slide into the booth across from him, which really speaks to how relaxed he’s become. _Too_  relaxed.  There’s never an excuse for being unprepared.  He has a hand on his knife in a second, but it’s a second longer than it would take for the person to kill him.

“Sergeant Barnes.”  A low voice.  Smoky. Female.  Curt greeting.  She lowers the hood on her sweatshirt and it’s all

red hair

swirling halo as she fights, fights him off, she’s good, she’s the only one who can land a punch

and Paris, yes, Paris, he remembers. He kissed her and she kissed back. They woke in the same bed sharing each other’s warmth.  “We could leave,” he said, “we don’t have to rendezvous,” and she had laughed because yes they did, there wasn’t a choice, just a single night of rebellion and another human being’s heartbeat quick in his ear

and they were punished

he remembers—

and he didn’t see her.  Thought she was dead.

Until—

tremulous mountain road.  Pine trees.  Mission held behind the woman with red red hair.  Mission on its knees.  Wounded. He could shoot her through the heart and blow off the mission’s head.  Easy, quick, death for certain.  For both of them.  Easy. He shoots her through the stomach and hits its heart instead.  Down they go. He dissembles his rifle quick and leaves. 

 _Why did you leave her alive?_  The handlers demand, once he is locked in the chair.  _You must kill those who interfere with the mission, do you understand?_   He doesn’t answer them.  Nothing he could say would be right, anyway.  It hurts more, that time.  Everything does.

But that red hair—

“Natalia?” he gasps out, back in real time, back in the greasy old diner.  His left hand drops the toast.  His right remains firmly locked around the knife hilt.

“Yasha,” she says, and smiles. “James Barnes. I hear you got your name back. So did I.  It’s Natasha now.”

“Natasha,” he tries out.  It’s smoother in his mouth, rounded where Natalia was pointed. It fits her better, he thinks. His hand on the knife relaxes slightly, though he doesn’t let it go.  You never know with Natalia—Natasha.  That he remembers.

She snatches his coffee mug and takes a sip. Makes a face.  “You and Rogers like it the same, I see.” She pushes it back towards him. “Speaking of Rogers. He’s wandering around like a lost puppy, waiting for you to come back.  Although I’ve got to admit I’m proud of him for the amount of restraint he’s showing, not busting right out and coming after you.”

He lowers his head and picks at his toast. There’s nothing to say, really.

Natasha ducks her head and forces him to meet her eyes. “You know how long you’ve been gone?”

He shrugs.  He’s been taking it slow.  Hasn’t been paying attention to much of anything, save the road.  “Few days.”

“Two weeks.  You didn’t even tell him you were leaving.  Or Sam.”

He sighs.  “Thought it would be better for them.  If I wasn’t around.”

“Why?”

He looks up.  “I make him sad.”

She nods.  “Yes,”

“I don’t _want_ to.”  His voice comes out plaintive.

“He’s only sad because he can’t do more to help you, James,” she says, voice softer than he’s ever heard it.  “He’s not sad because of you.  He’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him since you showed up.”

He just shakes his head.  He can’t trust himself to speak.

“You know,” she says, reaching across the table. She sets light fingers on the back of his hand where it lies next to the coffee mug.  The contact feels good.  “After the helicarrier?  The first thing he did when he got out of the hospital was start looking for you. He and Sam went everywhere, everywhere there was a scrap of intel on where you might be.  He was obsessed.  Consumed. And when Sam found you, the first thing he did was call me even though he _knew_ the number I gave him was only for emergencies.  And I’ve never heard him sound happier.”  

“It was,” he pauses.  Swallows.  “I was—after that. I wasn’t…good.”

Natasha’s eyes are heartbreaking. He never knew her as a sympathetic person, maybe because there was no such thing as sympathy, as kindness, in the Red Room, but this woman is kind, even if she doesn’t know it. “Come on, James,” she says fondly. “You don’t need to be _good_.  You just need to be there.”

“I made him cry,” he admits quietly.

“That doesn’t mean you had to leave,” she says.

“Yes it did.  I don’t—I didn’t like to see him cry.  And he can't put me back together, either.  Even if he wants to.  I have to.  Myself.”

Natasha remains silent.  She pulls his coffee back towards her and takes a long drink, despite her previous disgust. 

“Look,” she says finally.  “I’m not going to tell you what you did was wrong. I would have done the same in your place.  And Steve—his heart’s in the right place, he wants nothing more than to help you, but, well…sometimes Steve’s idea of _help_ is a little heavy handed.  And if this is what you decided you need to feel better, then kudos to you for making that decision.

“Just…don’t disappear on him. On any of us, okay? Because I think we both know you don’t _want_ to do that, so don’t make it some grand gesture of self-sacrifice.  Do what you need to do, and when you feel you’ve done it, come home.”

He looks up at her.  “You’re not gonna drag me with you right now?”

She laughs, shakes her head.  “Don’t think I could if I tried.  No, do your thing.  Take your time.  Just don’t be surprised if Steve meets you at your destination.”

“How do you know what my destination is?”

She rolls her eyes.  “Steve never shuts up about the Grand Canyon.”

He thought Steve would have forgotten. It was all such a long time ago. “Oh,” he says. There’s nothing else. Natasha smiles at him, takes a last swig of coffee, and stands.

“Welcome home, soldier,” she says, then presses a soft kiss to the side of his head and leaves.

 

* * *

  

The gentler hills fade as he drives and wilder canyonlands take their place.  Sheer red cliffs with trees prickly on their tops.  Gullies that drop a hundred feet directly off the side of the road. He feels more comfortable in the harsh emptiness than he can ever remember feeling before. The sky still spits rain. Perhaps he should have picked a better time of year to come, but he finds he doesn’t really mind.

He crosses the border into Arizona and drops down into another national park—this one, he’s never heard of. This one must have been made while they were both sleeping—sometimes, that’s the way he likes to think of what happened to him.  Not brainwashed. Not destroyed. Not a weapon.  Just sleeping. 

It’s nice to trick yourself, sometimes.

The park is miles and miles of twisted rock, littered with broken bits of wood and logs.  He stops at a viewpoint and sits on the railing for awhile, staring off across the desert.  There’s a spot, way off in the distance, where the sky meets the land.  Out there, the clouds are breaking.  He can see the faintest hints of blue.  He remembers the magazine, the unbelievable contrast of sky and red rock.  _They can’t be real.  Rocks can’t be that color_.  He realizes, with pang low in his stomach, that he wishes Steve were with him.

After the park, the country turns high and rugged. Pine trees crowd the slopes near the road.  It is hard to understand, this landscape, because it is not quite desert, but not quite mountain either. An amalgamation. (Like him, he thinks. Neither one thing nor the other, but something in between).  The pines and sharp slopes remind him of Eastern Europe, of innumerable nights spent quiet in the wilderness, waiting, waiting for the right moment. Innumerable bodies dropping to the dust. All because of him. But here—it’s not the same, he must remind himself of this.  Here, the trees are scattered, less dense.  Here, the mountains are softer and red, stratified sandstone rather than grey, cold granite.  Here, he can stop the car and stare at the sky for as long as he wants.  No mission to focus on.  No death. 

The high peaks to the north still have snow on their tops and it’s so white.  Peaceful. He remembers that peace. He thinks, perhaps, a bit of it has finally returned to him

 

* * *

  

The Grand Canyon is unexpected.   One second he’s driving through pine forest, then he’s inside the national park driving through pine forest, and then there isn’t any pine forest, there’s nothing at all, just a cliff and endless, undulating rock.  He’s never seen anything so beautiful, so improbable, in his life. Or maybe he has and doesn’t remember, or wasn’t allowed to see it as beautiful.  It doesn’t matter now, that’s what he realizes. It doesn’t matter.

The downside is people.  There are a lot of people and even though he trusts himself enough to not fly off the handle into a killing spree, that doesn’t mean he’s _comfortable_ with them.

He takes off on a trail without paying attention to what trail it is and does his best to lose them all.  This is the nice thing about people, he’s realized; they usually don’t go to much effort.  If the Grand Canyon’s spread out in front of them from a parking lot, why walk anywhere?

He finds a place where a tiny trail—probably not for people, but it doesn’t matter to him—descends down to a ledge about ten feet below the rim.  He settles with his back against sun-warmed stone and lets his feet dangle above the drop. He should be afraid of the thousands of feet of empty air below him but he isn’t.  He should be afraid of a lot of things at this point, but he’s tired. He wants to be okay. He knows he isn’t, probably never will be.  But.  He wants.  He _wants_. 

There were so many cold years. So many years of frozen white and bleak grey, so many years where he couldn’t shake a persistent chill, even when he didn’t know what caused it.  So many years where the only good thing his fractured mind could conjure up was blue sky, sunlight. On the face of a man. In the line between land and sky. A scrap of remembered warmth. And who would have guessed he would have a second—a third—a fourth chance?

This he remembers: the feeling on the helicarrier. The lightness in his chest when he realized the thing was burning and falling and he could let go, he could burn with it and finally be quiet and still. 

This he remembers: after that time, that time he fell (heatstroke, his mind tells him now, he had heatstroke when he first saw the sky), he looks up.  On every mission, every time he’s outside, he allows himself a quick glance upwards. Too fast, too furtive for handlers to realize.  It’s always something different, the sky.  An infinite arrangement of clouds, casts of light, colors.  It’s like a gift to himself, even though he doesn’t remember why he gives it.

This he remembers: once, a bird. Some bird of prey, a hawk or an eagle, soaring on strong wings.  His eyes follow its path.  He looks up for longer than usual, and one of the agents on the mission notices his distraction. He does not get angry, as the handlers would have.  Instead, he nods. “Shaheen falcon,” he says. “Native to this part of the world. Pretty cool, eh?” He does not answer. He cannot.  But he follows the path of the bird across the sky before flicking his eyes back down.  The other agents laugh at the man for talking to the Asset who never speaks.

This he remembers: earth warm against his back. Sun on his face. Finally, finally, he is not cold. Not so much a memory. An experience. Right now.

This he remembers:  Natalia, in the room in Paris.  Lying close.  Hair tickling his arm.  She was the only one who didn’t flinch the first time she saw the metal.  “I’ve got a lot of red in my ledger, Yasha,” she says after he suggests leaving.  “You can’t just leave, not when you’re like us.”  She’s right, of course. When you’re like them, you can’t walk away from anything.  You’re stuck in your past, in your present.  You’re stuck and you can’t possibly just leave it behind. 

He closes his eyes.  James Buchanan Barnes was someone who existed a long time ago. James Buchanan Barnes died falling from a train high in the European mountains.  Or maybe even earlier, strapped to a table in a cold room with needles in his skin.  The Asset was something that was made a long time ago and existed for far too long. It is no longer functional. It is smashed and broken and gone. And Bucky?  Bucky faded away somewhere in the trenches of his first battle.

So what’s left, then?  What’s left for him?

Well, he thinks.  There are some options (there always options. This is what Sam says). Maybe things can die, but the memories remain.  Maybe he’s nothing but patched-together memories.  Or maybe none of it died, after all.  Maybe it’s all just part of him, whether he likes it or not.  Or maybe it's a trajectory.  Maybe all of it was him, but he is none of it now.  Maybe now, he is something new.  Something new, where the old bits slot into where they belong but no longer define him.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” he whispers into the canyon. A massive raven squawks and explodes out of the piñon pine above him and spreads its wings, disappearing into the panorama. 

“James Buchanan Barnes,” he says again, louder. It echoes a bit, ricochets back towards him.  A validation. He laughs a little. He’d forgotten what it felt like. 

 

* * *

 

He stays on his ledge until dusk gathers, till the birds quiet and the cliffs turn soft pinks and purples in the gentler light.  He walks back in the silence of early evening.  He sees Steve from the trail, sitting on a bench by the parking lot.  Ridiculously broad shoulders.  Annoyingly good posture.  Blond hair like sunlight.   _Steve_.  The name rushes through his mind, his body.  He feels the pulse in his fingertips, feels the warmth of the breath as it leaves his lips.  Feels alive.   _Steve._

The clouds break over the canyon below. Patches of blue sky shed the last evening rays.  Blue sky, warm air. The sky is so important. Steve holds a drawing pad in his lap, his pencil moves back and forth.  He goes to him.  Sits down.

Steve keeps drawing, slow, quiet, like he’s trying to soothe. Not spook.  But he doesn’t think he spooks as easy anymore.

“Hey, Stevie,” he says quietly. Steve’s shoulders slump and his hand holding the pencil falls to the side.  He takes it.  Grips it tight, the pencil tangled between their fingers.

“Hey, James.”  Voice tight with tears.  It hurts to hear, hurts to see.  Hurts because it is his fault. 

“No,” he says, and squeezes harder. “You can call me Bucky.”

* * *

 

_we live in an old chaos of the sun,_

_or old dependency of day and night,_

_or island solitude, unsponsored, free,_

_of that wide water, inescapable._

_deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail_

_whistle about us their spontaneous cries;_

_sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;_

_and, in the isolation of the sky,_

_at evening, casual flocks of pigeons make_

_ambiguous undulations as they sink,_

_downward to darkness, on extended wings_

**Author's Note:**

> Title and end bit are from “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens.
> 
> I listened to Gregory Alan Isakov’s entire discography and wept while writing this so if you need mood music, there you go.
> 
> And, a disclaimer: I am not an expert on PTSD or identity issues or anything else Bucky displays in this fic. I do know that one two-week journey to the Grand Canyon wouldn't fix his problems, and I want to make sure the ending isn't viewed as a rosy, everything-is-fine-as-they-skip-into-the-sunset fix. Rather, I'd like to think of this as a first step, where things start to get a bit easier.


End file.
